Proteomics symposium looks at pediatric applications

Children's Hospital Boston will present a daylong symposium, Proteomics 2006, on Thursday, February 23, from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. at Enders Auditorium (320 Longwood Avenue, Boston). The event, open to the public, will feature talks by four internationally recognized proteomics scientists and three young investigators at Children's who are using this new science to better understand how the body works and seek clues about disease. A full schedule of talks is at bottom.

Proteomics, the study of an organism's complete complement of proteins, picks up where the Human Genome Project left off, asking what proteins each gene codes for and what they do in the body. It enables researchers to identify and quantify all the proteins in a cell, tissue or even a complete organism and investigate their structures and functions – information that's expected to yield big dividends in both pediatric and adult medicine.

"To really understand biological processes, we need to understand how proteins function in and around cells since they are the functioning units," says Hanno Steen, PhD, director of the newly opened Proteomics Center at Children's Hospital Boston, one of just a handful of proteomics facilities in the Boston area.

While similar to genomics, proteomics is far more complex: proteins have much more complicated structures than genes do, and while the genome is essentially hard-wired, the proteome continually changes. And the proteome is much larger than the genome: the 35,000 genes in the human genome correspond to at least ten times as many proteins. In extreme cases, over 1,000 proteins can come from a single gene.

Schedule of Events:

8.30 Welcome by Michael Greenberg, PhD, Member of the Research Strategy Group of Children's Hospital Boston

8.40 Introduction by Keith Solomon, PhD, Children's Hospital Boston
The history of the Proteomics Center at Children's Hospital Boston

Proteomics 2006 is sponsored by hospital's Surgical Research Council and the following vendors: Thermo Electron, GE HealthCare, Advion and Applied Biosystems.

Children's Hospital Boston is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults since 1869. More than 500 scientists, including eight members of the National Academy of Sciences, nine members of the Institute of Medicine and 10 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children's research community. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children's Hospital Boston today is a 347-bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. Children's also is the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For more information about the hospital and its research visit: http://www.childrenshospital.org/research/.

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By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on
21 Feb 2009
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.

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